LIVING WITH SMOLDERING MYELOMA IN TUSCANY

Daily Archives: October 15, 2011

Today, in between playing “Angry Birds” (= this game is bloooooody addictive, mamma mia…!!! Luckily, I have a certain degree of self-control!), I read an interesting Newsmax article that provides a few more details, of which I was unaware, about Steve Jobs’s specific type of pancreatic cancer and also discusses the potential of curcumin in the treatment of this deadly cancer. See: http://goo.gl/b3N7W

Now, here is a VERY important point: as you read the article, you will undoubtedly notice that the author keeps confusing the spice = “turmeric” with its active ingredient = “curcumin.” This happens a lot, unfortunately, and it still drives me bonkers.

FOR THE RECORD: turmeric the spice contains at the most 9% (I’ve also read between 2 to 6%…) of its active ingredient, curcumin, so, while we can certainly use turmeric in our cooking (and I personally use tons of the orange stuff…I sprinkle it everywhere, heaping teaspoonfuls!), we cancer folks must take curcumin…Turmeric would not help us…not much, anyway…Take my parents and husband, for example. They are all healthy, and they take four grams of CURCUMIN a day to prevent a million bad things from developing, from cancer to Alzheimer’s…and lots of things in between…

So, for example, when the author writes that pancreatic cancer patients enrolled in a Phase 2 MD Anderson clinical trial took eight grams of TURMERIC every single day, she really means eight grams of CURCUMIN. She also writes that Dr. Robert Wascher takes two grams of TURMERIC a day, but I’m 1000000% positive that he must be taking CURCUMIN. And so on…sigh…

However, apart from these glaring inaccuracies!, the article is interesting and well worth reading…so go have a look!